


these days of miracles and wonder

by miabicicletta



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things that never happened to Billy Keikeya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these days of miracles and wonder

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say, apart from: _Billllyyy_. Oh, Billy. I don’t think anyone’s ever written this pairing before. It has no canon bearing at all, but I make no apologies. This is dedicated to [](http://afrakaday.livejournal.com/profile)[**afrakaday**](http://afrakaday.livejournal.com/), for her encouragement and superlative beta job. Thanks for dealing with my typos and irregular word choices, friend! And to the one and only [](http://olga-theodora.livejournal.com/profile)[**olga_theodora**](http://olga-theodora.livejournal.com/), my partner-in-crime, my evilest twin, because she never balks when I get started on babies. Title comes from a [Paul Simon song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy5T6s25XK4) that always reminds me of BSG.

___  
___

 

It should not have been the shock that it was. After all, hadn’t he seen the Twelve Colonies destroyed at the hands of vengeful, near-human robots? And then watched as, by some luck – good, ill, blind or otherwise – his boss become leader of what was left of humankind, resulting in a more accelerated boost up the career ladder than either he or she could have imagined. Moreover, hadn’t he stood in the rain on Kobol; in a terrorist cell’s bullet spray; in the gladiatorial arena of a post-apocalyptic presidential election, an impossible survivor to each event somehow more extraordinary than the last?

Strange then, how, in spite of the bizarre and wondrous events Billy Keikeya had witnessed over the past two years, it is his girlfriend’s announcement on an unremarkable New Caprican day that shocks him to the core.

"I’m pregnant, Billy," Lt. Margaret Edmondson says.

She sits on the cot in his tent, the same way she has dozens of times since they’d descended on this rock, playing strip Triad or _not_ playing strip Triad, simply making the most of short time like they were teenagers again. Only this time he’s both wiser and more foolish at once; charmed and changed by a second chance at life.

Billy blinks, not understanding. "You’re...I’m sorry, what?" He stutters.

Since the day a terrorist had almost put a bullet through his heart, he’s become more in the world, such that it is now. He is more assertive. More outspoken. Bolder, though still sober and careful to listen. Billy can hear the words and knows their meaning, but he cannot for the life of him understand what Maggie is saying.

She narrows her eyes: "I’m _pregnant_. As in, _with child_. As in frakking _knocked up?_ Get it, Keikeya?"

Billy slumps back against his chair with a thump as loud as his heartbeat. "Oh my gods. _Oh_ my gods. Since when?"

She throws up her hands. "Since, I don’t know? Since the fifth time we frakked? The fifteenth? The fiftieth?"

Billy sucks in a long breath, his head spinning. "Okay. Okay," he says, running a hand through his close-cropped hair, cut in the manner of the pilots whose company he sometimes keeps now that he has one for a girlfriend. He likes the style, which makes him look less like an undergraduate slapped with the worst internship in the history of higher education and more like the man he's become since the end of the worlds.

"Okay." He lets out long, _whoosh_. "What’s the next step here. Do we see Cottle? Or get a marriage license or..."

"Oh my Gods, Billy," Maggie seethes. "No! That’s not--" She turns on him furiously, her ponytail arcing through the cool tent air. "Look, I know what I’m doing, okay? It’s not a hard choice to make, not for me. But I needed you to just...know. You know?"

He takes in her anxious expression and hard, shiny eyes and realizes there is something he’s not getting. The cubit drops. "Wait, you’re not..."

"I’m getting rid of it, Billy," Maggie says plainly.

He stares at her, lost. "You can’t do that. The President outlawed abortion."

"The _ex_ -President," she points out. She glares at him, arms across her chest. "And you and I both know there have been doctors flouting that decree since she made it. Does your loyalty to Laura Roslin _really_ extend so far that you’d support her frakked up policies before your own frakking girlfriend?"

"No," Billy says, looking away. "No, and I didn’t agree with her on that. You know that."

"Yeah, well, regardless. I’m now screwed because of it." She slumps down against him, leaning her cheek on his shoulder. "I can’t have a kid, Billy."

"Yeah."

"I’m a pilot."

"I know."

Maggie looks at him. "You want this."

He considers his feelings and finds himself more than a little surprised by the answer. "I do. I...Yeah. Actually. I do."

She sighs. "I’m sorry."

"Yeah."

Maggie had come to see him that afternoon, but it is Racetrack he watches leave for _Galactica_.

 

–––  
–––

 

"Where are you from?" he’d asked a pretty Raptor pilot one night, some weeks after they’d been cast to the ground on New Caprica. Her team from up-top had just delivered a cargo of heavy machinery from the flight deck on _Galactica_ when a storm grounded them. They’d waited out the rain and thunder in a dreary bar with even drearier menu. Billy had been finishing a report on the fledgling community infrastructure, but boisterous laughter from the far end of the claptrap, something of a roadhouse inspired a loneliness he hadn’t experienced in ages.

"Telemachus Green," answered Maggie Edmondson, sizing him up. She had a cheeky smile Billy liked. Her eyes were pretty, too. "On Picon," she clarified, taking a sip. Billy made a bad joke his brother-in-law had told him about Picon. She still laughed.

There weren’t as many lonely nights after that.

 

–––  
–––

 

The curtains parted and without his usual sense of decorum, Billy steps through the flap of Laura her tent, collapsing on her bed.

"Tough day, kiddo?" Laura asks from her pile of student papers, watching him rub at his temple. She reaches over to pat his knee. Their idle teasing at mother-and-dutiful-son is a bit of a private joke between them. Since the beginning, practically. A long time. After two years it’s still an act, still something of a game, but has become second nature, too. Something a whisper closer to the truth that not.

She can hear him thinking in the silence that follows and is suddenly worried. He sits up, leans on his knees. He hesitates. "Can I tell you something? I mean, without you becoming the ex-President of the Colonies for a minute?"

Laura frowns, setting her lesson plans aside. "Oh dear. This sounds grim."

"Not exactly," Billy answers, as though he isn’t sure he believes himself. "Maggie’s pregnant."

Laura’s spirits swell, but her elation is shortlived – the slump to Billy’s shoulders tells her more than his words.

"And she doesn’t want it, does she." It is not a question.

"No," Billy answers.

"No," Laura echoes.

 

–––  
–––

 

When the Cylons invade short days later, Billy thanks all the gods he doesn’t believe in that Maggie had gone back to _Galactica_ the night they argued.

When he’s dragged into detention, he wishes he’d gone after her.

 

–––  
–––

 

Two copies of the Fives come for him a night early in the occupation. They toss him into a holding room and leave him there for three days. It is not an uncomfortable room – there is a wooden chair, and a light that stays on. Except...

...sometimes, the lights go out.

...sometimes, Billy hears screams.

No one comes. No one asks him any questions. There is only silence, and then, darkness. And he is afraid.

He sits on the edge of the chair, hands folded. His arms rest on his knees. He faces the door. He is ready. Ready for what, he does not know. A pipe drips. Death, maybe. A door slams. Torture, maybe. Without specifics, he has only memories to distract. His vivid imagination to heighten the agony of anticipation.

_(Laughing, gentle scrapes against scalp-hair, buzzing a strange tickling lightness.)_

He switches to pacing. In the stark light, his fingernails have left marks in the arms of the chair.

_(Sticky and red, a paper gown in a sterile white room, floor a wet mess of tissue and tears.)_

They release him to the muddy streets at dawn. Cottle looks him up and down, slaps his shoulder above his old bullet wound and grumbles about his damned good luck.

_(Basestars swarm above a broken Galactica. The Admiral gone. Pegasus decimated.)_

Billy stumbles into the dark, searching the skies, remembering the tomb on Kobol and the shapes made by the brothers in the sky.

Overhead, there are only Raiders to scream.

 

–––  
–––

 

Their conversation starts the same way as it has every other time:

"I will not put you in that cockpit, Lieutenant," the Admiral repeats.

Maggie Edmondson checks herself. She knows Adama doesn’t take guff or attitude (unless said attitude is coming from Starbuck); anything she offers along those lines will end in her dismissal. She swallows her angry retort.

"Sir, due respect," Racetrack counters, "you can’t _not_ put me in it. There are barely enough rooks to man our birds. I’m one of the most senior Raptor pilots we have!"

Adama’s expression shifts to anger. He spits, incredulous, "You want me to send a pregnant woman into battle?"

Maggie pulls her shoulders back. "No, sir. I’m asking that you to send one of your _pilots_ on a critical rescue mission."

The Admiral shakes his head, removing his glasses. "How can you ask that of me?" He rasps.

One afternoon, months ago, Maggie had couriered a packet of documents to Felix Gaeta at the office of the president. Billy surprised her with a terrible picnic on the riverbank outside the town. They’d spent the afternoon sharing stale bread and dry fruit. She’d tried to teach him how to spar, but he was pretty bad at it. She gave him grief for his weak left hook and sentimental nature, but...then he was waiting for her at the landing tarmac the next time she was planetside. It was nice, having someone. Someone to see outside the bunk room. Someone who got her outside of her own frakked head.

"Because I want them to come home, sir," she says, wanting so much to break the molds of position and make him look at her, like this was another fight with her father, who refused to see her point. She wants to shake him and say, _For gods sake, please, let me help get them home!_ The Colonel and Starbuck, hell, even Felix Gaeta. Not even the worst traitor deserves to be left to the toasters. "All of them. And to do that, we need every gun we’ve got."

Adama tosses his glasses on the table and studies the set of photos on the end table. Her heart catches in her throat. Behind a frame, the former president beams a polished and unrevealing smile. And at her side is Billy, looking years younger than the last time she’d laid eyes on him. Why is his photo lying on the table in the admiral’s quarters?

"Sir," Maggie blinks quickly, hopes her voice does not break "we can’t run this time. Where could we go? This is our only chance."

 _If they’re still alive_ , she does not add.

Her eyes fall to Billy’s face in the heavy silence that follows. She misses him far more than she’s allowed herself to feel. _He’s sweet, but too sweet_ , she’d told Seelix. _It’ll never last_. Billy, oh Billy. She thought too little of him before this, and here she was now, wanting only everything.

"Lieutenant," Adama says, resigned. "You come back _alive_. Both of you. That’s a non-negotiable order. You’re dismissed."

She does not turn back when the Admiral offers someone – the Gods, maybe? – a plea for mercy under his breath. She _is_ surprised when he utters Laura Roslin’s with it. The photo makes a little more sense. He may be Galactica’s Old Man, but he is only human.

She departs, a ghost at her heels whispering about other times, and leaves the Admiral to his own.

 

–––  
–––

 

The day the resistance has been waiting for comes, and _Galactica_ falls from the sky.

The plans have been in place for a week now. The first of their ad-hoc explosives levels a machine shop (it goes off almost without a hitch). Pieces of debris are still falling when Chief Tyrol shoves Billy away from the trigger site. "Go, go!" He grabs Sam by the shoulder to do the same, but Sam shrugs him off.

"I gotta get Kara!" Sam says, and bolts off to gods-know-where. Billy hesitates a minute, almost following, wanting to follow really, but he’s got a job – hell, he has ten jobs today – and peels off down a dirty alley between tents instead, telling himself he has greater responsibilities than Starbuck, and to far more people. Doesn’t mean he feels good about ditching Sam, though.

He finds the other block captains near the massive crater that once was the market. He helps usher a few hundred people to ships, trying to keep order amid the blasts. Around them, bombs fall like rain. He swallows a gritty lungful of smoke, wondering if this is what his family saw during Picon’s last hours. Did his brother Jeff see Audrey before he died, or was it only the blinding flash before his building exploded in the shockwave? Was Ariane able to call Rinyun, or Tara find Cam and the girls? It’s all too easy to paint them into the scenes of death and destruction around him. He ducks his head and focuses on the task at hand ( _not dying_ ), helping as many people around him as he can.

He is ushering a boarding party to _Colonial One_ when something hard and metal slams into his lower leg. The strike sends him crashing to the ground. There’s a moment that feels like slow motion. He tries to readjust his vision. Everything is blurry except the particles of sand. _Alluvial deposits_ , Laura Roslin once told him. He lifts his head. The pain in his leg is incredible. He moves his lips, but cannot form words. Between the pain and the running figures and gray, ashy haze, he can only just make out the ship’s landing gear. Someone turns back.

"Go!" Billy hollers at the last few souls, clutching at his leg where – oh, frakking _frak_ , a glinting ribbon of metal that is way too frakking big for him to not be panicking is currently sticking out of his skin. Someone is running up to him. Billy waves them off.  
"I–I can’t walk. I won’t make it!"

"The frak you won’t," Tory Foster spits. She looks as though she’s just found him napping in a budget meeting. She grabs him with both hands – one by his hair and one by the back of his jacket, forcing him to his feet and taking some of the weight from his injured leg. "Move it, Keikeya! There is no way in hell you’re leaving me to get this Fleet back together by myself."

They scramble the remaining yards together, ducking debris and gunfire. She heaves him against the wall inside the landing bay, throwing the switch for slats to close.

For exactly one half-second, Billy wants to kiss her.

 

–––  
–––

 

After the rush of joy and gratitude at finding Maggie alive, the first coherent thought through his head is: _Oh my gods_.

"Oh my gods," Billy says, slumping into his crutch. _Eloquent, that._

"Oh my gods," Maggie sighs, her brown eyes wide.

He should say more, but his mouth just hangs open, wordless. He really wants to say more, but all he can think is _Oh my gods_ , over and over, and that the flight deck is a really shitty place for this reunion.

He can’t stop staring at her rounded stomach.

 

–––  
–––

 

"I did try," Maggie admits, touching the swell of her belly. He sits behind her, on the edge of a crate, watching as her eyes search the Memorial Wall for something or someone. "But after we jumped, there weren’t any doctors we had who were willing. And the more I asked...I mean, if we couldn’t..." She turns to him. "I just kept thinking about what you told me Roslin said, about humanity and the future."

"Yeah."

She sniffles and wipes her nose with her hand. She stands up straight, regarding him level. "I know you wanted this, before. Maybe you still do, I don’t know. I’m keeping this kid, Billy. For my own reasons. Maybe some of them are yours, too."

They lapse into silence. "Say something," Maggie huffs.

Billy shakes his head. "I...was not expecting this."

Maggie tips her head back, amused. "Yeah. Join the club, Keikeya."

 

–––  
–––

 

There’s a great deal of work to be done clearing out Baltar’s office, and he’s proud to see Laura Roslin literally roll up her sleeves to do so. It keeps them occupied, and when they need a break, they slump down in chairs that have seen better days (they have all seen better days) and just breathe for a quiet minute or two, given a comfort that comes from familiar surroundings.

The president breaks the silence first. "I saw Margaret Edmondson."

Billy lets out a long, slow breath. "Me too."

"And?" Laura throws him a look that very plainly said _Well?_

He sits down hard on the couch opposite her desk. He looks up, feeling shell-shocked. Again. "I’m going to be a father." He says it deliberately, like it’s a magic word, an invocation that will make some dream of it come true. _Father_. It feels strange to say now, knowing he belongs to it.

Laura smiles. One of her actual smiles, the kind that does justice to the phrase _she lit up the room_. "You’re going to be a father," she agrees, sounding very, very pleased.

"I’m," Billy starts to repeat the words, but felt the weight of them settles suddenly deep in the pit of his stomach. "I’m...going to be sick."

Tory halts as she glides past, her arms full of folders, and kicks a waste-bin unceremoniously at his feet. "I just had this carpet scoured," she hisses. "You vomit, and cleaning it will be the last thing you do before I airlock your ass."

Laura kicks her feet up on the desk and drums her fingers along the desk, laughing. "Play nice, children."

 

–––  
–––

 

He doesn’t have Maggie’s father to answer to, just her commanding officer. Which is to say that when the Admiral finally finds him, Billy really, really wishes Maggie still had a father who he could beg for mercy. As parents went, he’d had good ones – regular, genial folks who loved their kids, sent them to summer camp from the time they were young and took awkward pictures on holidays, year after year. Billy figured anyone halfway like Dave and Mirianne Keikeya could probably be counted on to show some mercy toward anyone who cared about ( _loved?_ ) their child and wanted nothing more for them but to be safe and be happy. The same could not necessarily be said for admirals.

"One of my Raptor pilots is grounded, Mr. Keikeya," Bill Adama growls. The iron fist on Billy’s shoulder steers him away from the Ward Room, down a long hallway leading to the Adama’s private quarters.

Billy flashes on a memory of the one time he’d asked girl out in high school. Pretty Anne Chappell, with her quick laugh next to him in physics...and her devout Gemenese father, who’d taken him aside and detailed to Billy each of the hells he’d visit if so much as held his daughter’s hand.

"Sir, I assure you – we took every precaution. This was unplanned, but I have every intention– " Billy starts.

The admiral’s scowl righted into a quick – and unnerving – smirk. "Relax, Billy. I’m not here to chew you out. I’m just having some fun." The security team on post opens the door, as Billy follows Adama through.

The older man sits on the edge of his table, glances quickly through a file marked PRIORITY. Deciding its contents satisfactory, glances up, a look of appraisal on his face. "You remember the day of the attacks?"

Billy blinks, surprised by the question. "What?"

"Do you remember the day of the attacks?" Adama repeats.

"As best I can sir. It’s...fuzzy, in parts."

Adama nods. "Adrenaline does that." He eases into a chair and pushes the files aside. "The first time I met Laura Roslin as President of the Twelve Colonies, she said that in order for the human race to survive we needed to do two things: Run, and start having babies."

He gestures for Billy to have a seat. "So my thanks to you for making good on the second part. How you’re doing with this?"

"Besides scared out of my mind, sir?" he asks, lowering himself into the chair.

Adama chuckles. "That part goes without saying. You’re twenty-seven?"

"Twenty-eight."

The Admiral claps him on the back and hands him three fingers of a stiff drink. "I was your age when Lee was born. It’s hard under the best of circumstances, and these are definitely not the best of circumstances." The Admiral smiles. "You’re smart. You’re tougher than you look. You’ll do just fine."

Billy thinks of his parents. He wonders if they’d be as proud as the Admiral if this had happened in another time and place. "Thank you, sir."

"Just do me one favor."

"Anything, sir."

"Make sure you bring the little one by to visit now and again. It’s about time I had some grandchildren."

 

–––  
–––

 

A few weeks go by in a blur. One afternoon Dee comes up to him in a hallway, smiling. "Congratulations," she says.

He’s not sure why it comes as a surprise that she sounds so sincere. The thing between them is long since over, and even when it had been new and over, Billy had seen his many mistakes with her for what they were, how he’d tried so hard to turn their relationship into something it was not.

 _Life is too short for awkwardness,_ he tells himself, and smiles. "Thanks. I’m pretty freaked out, but happy about it. We’re happy about it."

She nods. "You propose to her?"

He shrugs, shaking his head. "She doesn’t want to get married. And neither do I, really." He bumps her shoulder as they walk. "Tried that once before. Didn’t really take. Think I’m meant to prowl the market, like the debauched womanizer I am."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. I put Baltar to shame. Completely. It’s really gotten to be a problem." He grins at her sidelong.

Dee rolls her eyes, giving him a cheeky look. "Riiight. Well, I’m off to a shift. I’m sure the boards will be busy tonight with the Fleet gossiping about all the broken hearts you’ve left in your wake."

He put a heavy hand on her shoulder in mock seriousness."Be kind. The only mistakes they made were falling for me."

Dee kisses his cheek. "I’m happy for you, Billy. I really am. Holler if you need a babysitter. You've got my number." He does, and finds himself glad to have it.

As she walks away, he calls plaintively after her retreating figure: "Tell Felix I’ll never forget that night!"

Dee’s laughter cackles down the hall.

___  
___

 

"You owe me a pilot, you know." Bill glares, shutting the hatch to his quarters behind him with a resonant _thud_.

The president turns, one elbow on the desk and considering him over the frames of her glasses.  
"Excuse me?" She tosses her paperwork aside.

"Your aide. He’s responsible for knocking one of my pilots out of rotation for the next few months."

"Oh, of course. His fault. I imagine your _pilot_ had some involvement in the matter as well, but that’s beside the point. So you’re down one Raptor pilot for the time being. What exactly would you have me do about that, Admiral?" the president teases. "Hop into a flight suit, I suppose?"

"Now that," the Admiral’s stony facade cracks as he lowers himself to the couch, "I would like to see." They grin at one another a moment before Laura accepts the drink in his hand. They clink glasses as Bill grins. "Billy?"

Laura preens. "Billy."

Bill laughs. "Didn’t know he had it in him."

She elbows him in the shoulder. "Soldier, I’ll have you know that the spoils of youth aren’t just for the dashing young pilots among us." She flashes him a wicked look. "Even those of us so dull as to have wasted ourselves on academic distinction are, from time to time, capable of a little vigor and vitality."

"‘Carnal knowledge,’ you might say. Remind me what your PhD is in?"

Laura snorts. "Well played. I suppose I set myself up for that one."

"An opening wide as my flight deck." He reaches for _Blood Runs at Midnight_. Laura tucks up against him and lays a cheek on his shoulder.

"Now, where were we?"

 

–––  
–––

 

"Tabitha." Billy says.

"No. Mark?" Maggie counters.

"Marcus Kosaba turned a lunch tray over my head once in middle school."

"That’s a no, then?"

"That’s a no."

Billy reaches for another nail, consulting the plans Galen Tyrol had given him. What he wouldn’t do for a shopping mall planet…

"Atticus," he says.

"No. Lydia?"

"Maybe. Jonathan."

"Maybe. Alexander."

"No."

The crib gets built, bet they don’t get any closer to a name.

 

–––  
–––

 

The honorable delegate from Virgon is displeased. As usual.

"I know you’re Roslin’s golden boy, but that doesn’t give you the authority to single-handedly shoot down my resolution. _Especially_ considering you are the junior member of this Quorum." Bagot tosses the stack of folders across the conference table, exasperated.

Billy rolls his eyes at the drama of it all.

Billy sighs, and pauses, considering his approach. "Look, Marshall, I understand. The _Zephyr_ is one of the oldest ships in the fleet, and among the most energy-dependent. So are the _Daru Mozu_ and the _Hitei Kahn_. But the difference is in the services those ships provide. We can’t allocate more fuel and water to a largely residential ship."

Bagot leans of the table, pointing to a list of numbers."But we’re already running at minimal power and water. People sitting alone, in the dark, waiting for the few hours of light they’ll have." He throws his arms wide, looking around. "Meanwhile, on _Colonial One_ , you’ve got unlimited fuel and cycling systems."

"Well, working almost around the clock to keep people alive has something to do with that. But that’s the thing – we’re trying to keep people alive. Keep life support and cycling systems functional, and at the same time, defend ourselves from the Cylons and keep jumping through space." He leans forward. "This system is imperfect. That’s why we’re trying occupational rotation throughout the Fleet. Give people a chance to learn new skills, that will keep them busy and keep the Fleet operating in a way that is sustainable–"

There’s a knock at the bulkhead, and Lee Adama parts the curtain. "I’m sorry to interrupt, Representative Bagot, but your counterpart from Picon is greatly needed aboard the _Galactica_."

Billy shuffles his folders together. "What’s the president need?"

"I’m afraid she’s demanding your presence in Life Station." At Billy’s stricken look, Lee quickly adds, "Racetrack just went into labor."

 

–––  
–––

 

He’d taken one look at Ishay tapping a vein in Maggie’s arm to deliver painkillers and had promptly passed out on the floor. When he came to, Cottle had swiftly kicked him out of Life Station and conscripted the president as Maggie’s cheerleader.

"Are you insane?" Laura had exclaimed. "Doctor, under no circumstances do I intend to impose myself on the lieutenant while she’s struggling through childbirth. The last thing she needs is me of all people hovering around her."

"Sit your ass down and hold that girl’s hand, Roslin." Cottle growled. "Next week you’ll be asking her leave her newborn baby in your office while she climbs back in the cockpit to put her life on the line keeping you safe from the Cylons. So you’ll hold her hand, and tell her to do good, and be something more than a platitude-pushing democratic figurehead for a few hours."

Billy had never seen Laura Roslin chastened before, but Cottle’s words did the trick. She’d given Billy a cold compress and escorted him out, promising to fetch him as soon as there was something to report.

"Platitude-pushing my ass…" he’d heard her grumble.

Hours go by. Billy isn’t sure how many. A lot. Probably fewer than the age on Aerilon that it feels like, but still. A lot.

Lee Adama sits outside Life Station with him for much of it, which is strange. Stranger still when Starbuck shows up, taking the seat on Billy’s other side. Through the torrent of emotions coursing through him, he picks up on a strange tension between his companions. They glance at one another at odd moments. Billy doesn’t really care what’s going on between them. He can guess, but he doesn’t really care. It stings to think of Dee, she’s been a good friend. But she knew what she was getting with Captain Apollo, who seemed caught in a slingshot trajectory that always came back to Kara Thrace.

Finally the door opens.

"Come meet your daughter, Mr. Keikeya." Laura grins. She leads him inside where Maggie is holding a tiny pink blanket that won’t stop squirming. His heart skips at the sight. It might be the most perfect thing he’s ever seen.

"Hi," Billy breathes. "Oh my gods. She’s so tiny." He laughs a laugh that is more shock than amusement, with a bit of terror to top it off. Lee and Kara follow, with the Admiral on their heels.

They all just stare and smile at the newborn for a few minutes, during which even Doc Cottle pronounces her "damn near close to perfect" and even has the grace to stop smoking. After a moment Billy clears his throat. "Captains, Madame President, Admiral, please meet Julia Edmonson."

"Edmonson-Keikeya," Maggie corrects from her nest of pillows, weary but happy.

 

–––  
–––

 

It doesn’t make her different, having a kid. She’s certain she still able to make the same choices. She’s still able to go be the soldier, be the pilot, she was before.

It’s just a little harder every time she has to.

But she does it. Ten days after Jules is born, she gets the go-ahead and the CAG has her back in the rotation before she can blink.

There are time she catches Helo and Athena eyeing her. Especially when she has Jules. They aren’t looks of hate, or even envy. They’re none of the thing Maggie expects to receive. Instead, the Agathons just look at her with longing. With sadness.

She’ll tells herself she’ll never accept the frakking toaster, or what goes on in Helo’s mind to have chosen one Cylon over the rest of humanity. But after her daughter is born, Maggie thinks maybe she understands Athena in some small way.

They are both mothers, in the end.

 

–––  
–––

 

Billy splits his time between _Colonial One_ and the tiny room on _Galactica_ where Maggie lives. Daycare options are irregular at best, and with Maggie at the mercy of her CAG, Billy is Julia’s primary caregiver and Cottle’s auspicious prediction comes true.

The president finishes a call, bouncing Julia on her hip. She drops the phone, groaning, leaning in to Julia as if in confidence. "‘Stuff it, you mean man,’ is what I’d like to have said," she tells her.

Billy laughs. "She agrees."

"You speak Baby?"

"Naturally. I’ve been practicing for months. You couldn’t tell?"

Laura nods sagely. "Ah, your memos make more sense now. How thoughtful of you to translate them for our new intern."

"I’m nothing if not thorough," Billy replies.

The president laughs. "Indeed."

Billy clears his throat, wanting to bring up something that has been weighing on him. "Sir, I was hoping that Jules could consider you her family."

Laura looks startled. "What a thing to say." She looks up for a moment and bites her lip. "I would be honored. I hope the gesture extends to her father and her mother as well."

Billy nods. "And if something happens to me, or to Maggie, will you make sure she goes to a good home? A good family?"

For a moment, she looks stricken. "I promise. For as long as I can," Laura says, rocking Jules in her arms.

It’s an odd choice of words, but Billy chalks it up to the uncommon emotional outpouring from the president. She sniffles and recovers a moment later. "Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some gossiping to catch up on. Go on, go. Catch up with the lieutenant or do whatever it is passes for fun around here."

"Madame President?" he asks, reluctantly pulling on his jacket. "Did you just steal my baby?" At that Laura shoots him a dark look, cradling baby Jules protectively.

He feigns innocence and adjust his tie.

"Yes, William, I did. Now scoot. I have doting to do."

"Tyrant," he calls through the doorway.

"Scoundrel," Laura sweetly replies.

When Lee Adama puts her on trial some weeks later, he’ll think back to their conversation and realize what Laura Roslin knew that day: She was dying all over again.

 

–––  
–––

 

"Oh, she’s just gorgeous. Isn’t she, Admiral?"

"Ridiculously. She’s gonna break some hearts."

"Mmhmm," Laura agrees.

"And the kid’s pretty cute, too."

Laura slaps his knee but makes no effort at all to suppress her grin.

 

–––  
–––

 

He looks up to the knock at the hatch and finds Starbuck regarding the ensign drooling on his shoulder with a wary eye. "Uh, sir, I can come back..."

"No, come on in Starbuck. Mr. Keikeya has been a little overworked, lately," he says, indicating to the couch where Billy is passed out (also drooling). "Needed some reinforcement."

"Yeah," Starbuck says, following him to the desk in the corner. "I hear they’ll do that to you. So. This is Racetrack’s kid, huh? She got bigger."

The Admiral preens."Julia. We’ve been calling her Jules." He turns so Kara can see Julia flexing her fingers around the buttons of his jacket, already working on her fine motor skills.

Kara tips her head."Quiet. Didn’t think they made ‘em that way."

"Wish Lee would get his act together, start giving me a few more of these." Bill lifts his gaze pointedly for a half-second. He sits at his desk, arranging Julia just so.

"A few more?" Starbuck echoes, one eyebrow arched.

The Admiral shrugs. "You get to my age, you take what you can get."

The comm rings, and Bill gestures to Kara. "C’mere."

"Oh sir, I don’t – " she starts to protest.

Bill stops her with a stern look. "Look alive, Captain. She’s not gonna break." He reaches for the comm and barks his response, watching as Kara steps awkwardly to the couch. Frankly, he’s far more interested in Kara Thrace vs. infant than he is with Mr. Gaeta’s navigational concerns, but such is duty.

He continues on the line for a few moments, then places a series of calls to captains throughout the Fleet, spot-checking them on their emergency coordinates and their roles in evasive plans. All the while, he watches Kara out of the corner of his eye as she stares down the small creature in her lap. What first was fear and discomfort gives way to amusement and (dare he hope?) contentment.

The slumped lifeform laying next to her eventually stirs. "I must still be dreaming. Are you _babysitting_?" Billy yawns, rubbing his eyes.

"Under duress," Starbuck mutters, idly stroking her fingertip gently down Julia’s button nose.

 

–––  
–––

 

The night Kara Thrace dies, Billy gathers his small daughter and reads to her from the Articles of Colonization. The heavy tome is the first volume in a large series of legal texts the Admiral had given him when he became a Quorum delegate, and to hold it in his hands brings a small part of the worlds lost back to life.

"We hold it true that all men and women are made equal," he tells his daughter. "To pursue their happiness, serve their worlds, be granted protections."

They will not bring Starbuck back to life.

When Maggie is done pretending to be unaffected by the death of an "over-rated, pain-in-the-ass, walking problem," and that she hadn’t learned her brand of bravado at the Starbuck School of Not Giving a Shit, she looks at him, bleary-eyed and puzzled. "The Articles? Isn’t there something more appropriate to read to her?" She is no temple devotee but observes the aspects and ways of faith that have become part of secular life, as many do.

"What, like Scripture stories?" Billy chides, derision creeping into his voice.

"I was thinking more a prayer, I suppose," she answers, thumbing the edge of the baby’s blanket.

Billy shrugs, and turns a page. "This is what I believe in." Maggie does not press him. Julia falls asleep somewhere during Article 2. Billy marks the page with a scrap of paper; they would pick up there tomorrow, provided it came.

Months later Kara Thrace lives, and for the first time in his life, Billy wonders if he hasn’t been wrong about everything all along.

 

–––  
–––

 

There are no stars.

A cold wind howls through dead trees, casting long, black shadows on broken earth. Ruins surround them, telling the story of their own loss, their own demons, lightyears behind and a universe away. It is a desolate place; a dead corner of an empty world. If once it had been a haven of sorts, and a hope of the lost tribes of Kobol, then it has forgotten its promises. It has forgotten itself.

Billy turns away from his company, and looks to the skies.

He sees no stars from Earth.

 

–––  
–––

 

Life that is barely just continues in the Fleet. Laura Roslin is not herself, the Admiral is largely absent and no one can hear the word "hope" without sneering in disgust. And so in the speech Billy gives, with Lee Adama at his back, he does not tell the Fleet to hope. He only reminds the few thousand people left how they have found habitable worlds before, and that they will find one again. This time without the undue burdens of history and scripture compelling them to do so, or dictating where. They will make a new life on their own terms. And if he doesn’t expect cheers and soaring spirits, when he is done a few faces in the crowd look a bit less despondent than they did before. For now, it is enough.

As he leaves, Billy sees Dee down the far end of a hallway. She smiles and gives him a wave. Dee looks pretty, and he is glad to see her, smiling and holding hands with Lee. Perhaps they have mended fences, and will make it this time. Billy waves back. Perhaps they all will make it. She walks away with Lee, her hand in his hand, and Billy feels a lightness, and a truer sense of hope than he has felt for a long time.

Dee shoots herself in the head forty minutes later. She dies on the floor the way Billy didn’t, once, because Dee had been there to stop the blood. She is still wearing her pretty dress.

 

–––  
–––

 

After the mutiny, everything is undone.

Maggie stands behind cell bars and he can only wonder what brought her here. When did the wounded parts of this Fleet begin to rot? When did she begin to leave their home each day with designs for a coup turning over in her brain? How could she believe Zarek, and his slippery, convenient truths? He doesn’t even know where to begin asking for answers, so he puts just the one to her.

"Why?" he asks, blinking back tears.

On the far side of the bars, Maggie looks at him, as if the answer is self-evident. "Because the Adama family isn’t the only part of the Fleet that matters," Maggie replies.

Billy looks at her face. Small lines have formed in the year since Jules was born, a year that made a pilot’s life in wartime, hard as it was, that much harder. They are not the only change in this face he knows and loves so well. Maggie has always been quick-tempered and something of a cynic, whose anger at the Cylons fueled her on the most desperate of days. But the worn-out woman before him looks only like she is reconciled to her fate, like she has accepted she’ll never walk _Galatica’s_ halls freely. Like she may never hold her child again.

She steps closer to the bars, looking up at him. Imploring him to see. "They stopped doing their jobs. Billy. They gave up on us. On this Fleet."

"So did you," is all Billy can reply.

 

–––  
–––

 

The Admiral has him questioned. It does not come as a surprise, given that Billy’s roommate, lover, and mother of his child had, short days before, actively suborned mutiny. Probably doesn’t help matters that he’d had drinks with Felix Gaeta less than a week ago, either, he points out, trying for humor in a place where none is welcome. He’s given a swift kick that knocks him out of his chair for the effort. When all else is considered, it’s a high point for the interview.

The hatch is ajar when he arrives at the admiral’s quarters, sore and sleep-deprived. He’s got an hour before he has to find the Agathons and claim Jules yet, and though he’s been told the president is resting ( _a lazy euphemism_ , he thinks), he hasn’t spoken to her in days; he’d like her advice and counsel. He’d be lying if he didn’t hope for a measure of comfort as well. He rubs his aching jaw and walks gingerly on his bad leg down the short corridor, where he catches sight of Lee Adama hovering just outside the door jamb. He appears to be listening in on a conversation he is not a part of.

"...don’t understand how." Laura says, her voice low and carefully measured. "After everything he’s done. After everything we’ve been through."

"His wife –" (The president hisses.) "– whatever you want to call them – turned her gun on Kara. On my son. She tried to overthrow this government and the leader she supported tried to kill _you_ in the process."

"He didn’t know. Just like you didn’t know about Felix –"

 _Slam!_ "Goddammit –"

"I needn't remind you that he is a leader in this Fleet. He stood with you when _I_ defected. What greater loyalty could you ask for?"

" _He’s not your son, Laura!_ " Adama roars. "He’s not _my_ son."

Silence fills the room. It slips through the door, into the hallway, where it wraps the pair of them in its heavy folds. Billy says nothing, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing and feeling every moment passing as though he had been exposed on other side of this door, rather than safely behind it.

A long moment passes before the president responds, "And Kara Thrace isn’t your daughter, Bill. Don't forget it."

A door slams, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Billy and Lee share a look, equal parts embarrassment and guilt. He isn’t sure why he feels either. But Lee seems to understand, and shakes his head.

"The parents are fighting," Billy quips after they’ve turned and stepped away from the unwelcoming door. He feels very old. "Guess we should be concerned."

"No," Lee says. He dips his head a moment before looking Billy in the eye. "The fights are to be expected. Good, even, in a way. It’s when they stop you need to start worrying."

 

–––  
–––

 

Hera Agathon is kidnapped. The _Galactica_ will make a last stand.

Adama asks them to make a choice, and Billy steps over the line. It’s not a difficult decision to make. Not when Hera Agathon disappeared in the space of an hour. Not when it could have been his daughter. Not when they’ve fought for so long, for so much. He hasn’t always seen eye to eye with the leaders of the Fleet: He never believed in the Scriptures Laura Roslin felt she must follow, and has been greatly troubled by Bill Adama’s diminishing perspective in the past months.

Yet though he has chosen other paths than those Laura Roslin or Admiral Adama were willing to take, he has found his way back to their sides, too.

He takes his place across the line, standing at Kara’s side, beside Lee, who shakes his hand and grips his shoulder as though they’ve brothers in arms all along. Maybe they have been. Billy nods back. Strange now, those long-ago days of rivalry. He glances at the rings both Kara and Lee wear, memories of other partners, of promises made and broken; how much had changed since they slipped those rings on.

Starbuck and Apollo lock eyes and something Billy knows he will never understand blazes between them. How much has stayed the same. Maybe it comes from putting your life in someone else’s hands and leaving the battlefield alive, together. Maybe from somewhere, someone, else entirely.

His choice is clear, and his decision is easy enough to make.

Saying goodbye to Julia is not.

His impossible little girl gurgles happily in his arms, playing with a rag tied with string that she thinks is a doll. It makes his throat ache with humiliation and shame. For all he took for granted, before. For everything he cannot give his daughter, now. The captain of last civilian shuttle glances at him, taps his wrist. The civilian woman and her daughter look on, eager to depart but not to interrupt.

"Julie-bean," he says, kissing her hair. "You’re gonna go with this nice lady and her daughter. Her name is Julia, too. Isn’t that funny?" He smiles tightly at Julia Brynne, trying to keep from sobbing. "And Kacey here is going to help watch out for you and make sure you have everything you need, okay?" The tow-headed little girl looks to her mother, and hugs her close. They are lucky to have one another.

"Go go go," Julia babbles, touching his chin. She shrieks, grinning, and burrows her head into his shoulder. "Dadadada."

"I love you," he tells her. Against the clang and clatter of activity on the deck, his voice is hushed and unsteady. "You’re my best thing, you know that? My best thing in this whole universe." He kisses her once more, holds her. Just once more. "My best girl."

"Thank you," he says, at last handing her off to Julia Brynne. "If you need anything, ask for Doc Cottle."

She nods and, helping Kacey, ascends to the last Raptor.

"Dadadada!" Julia shouts. Behind brown wispy curls, her big blue eyes, scared and panicked, find his. She tries to claw herself away from the Brynnes as the shuttle door closes.

The sound of her cries echoes in his ears for a long while after her ship has jumped away.

 

–––  
–––

 

Inside the arms locker, Starbuck considers him, skeptical. "You’re really gonna do this?"

Billy loads his gun, locking the safety in place. "Worry about yourself, Captain."

"I’m not the one with a toddler to come back to."

Billy looks at her. "You know, they told me I flatlined on that table twice after I was shot. That for a while there, I was pretty much gone."

"What’s your point?" she growls.

He straps on his bulletproof vest, looking at her. "So I know what’s at the end of the line if this doesn’t work. I’m ready for it."

"Billy Keikeya and the end of the line?" Kara shakes her head, snorts. "Sorry, but your cover band sucks."

He grins. "We’re better than Kara Thrace and her special destiny."

She shoulders her gun and cuffs his ear as she strides past. "The frak you are, nugget."

 

–––  
–––

 

Lee Adama offers them the deal: Freedom for one more fight against the Cylons.

She pictures Athena and Helo, lost in their anger and their grief. Athena. The toaster with a circuit board heart. The soldier with the half human child. Hera. All dark curls and shy smiles. Not so different from Julia.

In the end, there’s no way to explain anything to Billy. There is not time. All she has is half a moment on her way from cell to flight deck. She pauses, passing Apollo, and says, "Tell Billy: I never stopped."

She leaves, called to her duty.

 

–––  
–––

 

He had told Kara he was ready, but the reality is: Billy is not ready. Maybe no one is ever really ready to put it all on the line, no matter how grand a gesture. No matter the fact that it’s the right thing to do.

It is the right thing to do. And so he joins the last fight.

For his parents. For his sisters. For his brother. For their families. His family.

He joins for Caprica, and Picon, and Virgon. He joins for the Colonies, and all humanity. He joins the fight for his friends, his classmates, his teachers. He joins for his seventh grade Pyramid coach, and for the girl he took to junior prom.

He joins for the Fleet. He joins for the civilians on the _Olympic Carrier_ , for the _Pegasus_ , for the _Cloud 9_.

He joins for New Caprica, and for the Resistance.

He joins for Tory Foster, who toaster or not, didn’t let him die on that rock, even if he never walked the same way again.

He joins for Sam, and Galen Tyrol, and Saul Tigh. The Cylons who weren’t in all the ways that mattered.

He joins for Lee and for Kara, both doomed and blessed at once.

He joins for Dee, who should be here.

He joins for the Admiral, who loved the President and couldn’t live without her, who didn’t want to live without her. Some days, Billy didn’t want to live in a universe without her either.

He joins for Laura Roslin, his mentor, his great friend. The closest to home he ever felt anymore was having her and his daughter near.

He joins for Maggie, because she always fought. Even when they didn’t agree on what was worth fighting for, she fought. For everyone.

He joins for Jules, his best thing. The bright center of his whole universe.

 

–––  
–––

 

She has precious little in the way of medical training but does her best to keep up with the stream of injured men and women who course through the doors of Life Station. But the stretchers keeping coming and coming, until their beds are well past capacity. Humans and Cylons alike groan in pain. And in fear.

"Shh, shh," Laura whispers to a crying young woman. "It will be okay."

Her right leg is severed below the knee, and the shrapnel wounds to her other extremities will kill her before a doctor can undo their damage. Still, she is calm, and kind. It is all she can be.

An older man, eyes bloodshot. A recent recruit, barely old enough to enlist, but just enough to die for his people.

A patient with a chest wound struggles to sit up. Laura pushes him back, eyes drawn to the bullet wounds in his abdomen and thorax. She lifts his shirt to see the damage…and closes it just quickly. If he has any hope, he'll need an IV immediately, and a transfusion of blood they do not have. That, only after Cottle has pulled out the bullets. She takes a shuddering breath. No, this young man’s fate was determined before he even arrived.

It is only after she has consulted his injuries and determined his chance of surviving to be minimal that she sees his face.

"Laura…" Billy coughs lungfuls of blood.

The breath goes out of her lungs for a moment, all she can do is stare, then turn in desperation for Ishay or Cottle or _someone_. The ship rocks with blows that suggest more will come soon. "No. Oh, no, no no!" She whimpers.

"It’s okay," Billy rasps. His bloody hand closes over her gloves, sticky and wet.

"Shh, shh," she manages, touching his cheek. She cannot stop the tears. She squeezes his hand, so totally lost. So unable to do anything of use. Powerless. Leaning over him, she presses her lips to his forehead. "Oh, _Billy_."

"Jules," he whispers. "You promised."

"I know," Laura cries. "I will, I know. Oh, Gods, Billy…"

Much else of Life Station is blurred by her tears, but the black _X_ her pen leaves upon his forehead is unmistakable.

 

–––  
–––

 

Laura chooses a small clearing on the edge of a wide, lush plain for Billy Keikeya’s grave.

There are many burials and commemorations for those lost in the final battle, Margaret Edmondson included. But among the few who attend his funeral, there is the feeling that Billy is theirs, and theirs alone, and so it is a small gathering of intimates. Family. Lee and Kara dig a space in the loamy soil and Saul Tigh fashions a simple wreath of budding green boughs to mark the grave. Billy’s daughter whimpers, irritable and unwilling to be soothed until the Admiral takes her aside and whispers soft words to her in Tauron. Laura watches, deep peace settling on her, a fullness, a sense that something great has ended, and feels cheated all the same.

No one really knows that to say, until Kara Thrace speaks. Laura recognizes the words, an old poem by Kataris about a great battle on Aerilon. "The minstrel boy, to the war has gone," she says. The stand in a small circle, and listen. By the final verse, Laura can hardly bear to listen for the anguish of it:

"Then may he play on his harp in peace,  
in a world such as heaven intended,  
For all the bitterness of man must cease,  
and ev'ry battle must be ended."

"He was the best of us," Lee says. "All of us."

"So say we all," Tigh mutters, sounding surprisingly affected. He lays a well-worn patch bearing the emblem of the _Galactica_ below the wreath. "He earned it. Every day."

Julia lets out a little cry. The child’s small voice triggers something in Laura’s fading memories...Something spoken by Leoben, though where or when, she cannot say. "Parents have to die for children to reach their full potential," she whispers. _Oh, Billy_. So unfair. With shaking hands, she removes her glasses and closes her eyes.

"Not like this," Kara says, a hand on her shoulder. Her voice is hard, angry.

In spite of her grief, Laura’s eyes remain dry. Her body has no more tears to shed. She will follow her something-son from this life soon enough. "I agree." She summons Bill, taking Julia from him. She holds the girl close, a warm, gentle bundle with sweet-smelling hair, petal-soft skin. She presses a kiss to the child’s brow. "You are not done yet, Kara Thrace," Laura whispers, and pushes Julia in to Kara's arms.

Kara says nothing. She stares at the child, uncertain.

This is how Laura Roslin says goodbye.

 

–––  
–––

 

The Raptor leaves, vanishing over the horizon to the east, where darkness is creeping upon them in rose-purple clouds. Kara stands with Julia for a long time. She once held another child, not her own. A child who looks to another mother now. Lost to her, like Caprica. Like Sam. _Galactica._

The light fades, and with it the life of Laura Roslin. Soon, both will be gone. Kara wishes the last president of the Colonies peace. She has earned it.

The little girl cries. For fear or hunger or discomfort or wanting for something her parents cannot give her. Kara turns away.

"Kara?" Lee calls from the trees, suddenly fearful and alert. "Where are you going?"

Julia presses her tiny hands into Kara’s hair, whimpering. Wanting something, and so much. Very much alone.

Kara turns back, looking first from the child to him, and then to the stars shining above. "Wherever you want, Lee."

Above them, the stars shine as they once did upon the Colonies, as they once did upon Kobol, so very long ago.

 

–––  
–––

 

_Time will pass. The child will grow._

_She will have a pair of sisters, like her grandmother, like the father she never knew. She will have a brother, like the father she did. She knows about them all. They are her teachers and her heroes, and she learns of their great deeds and adventures from long nights spent beside the fire at her grandfather’s cabin, rocking in a chair made by hand, and listening to the stories of the extraordinary lives they once led._

_She will learn to run, and to hunt, and do far more than live for the sake of survival. She will paint the world she sees, she will play its wild music. She will look to the world with a scholar’s mind, able to appreciate the feats of biological and mechanical engineering that birthed one race and saved another. Mathematics and language and art and the histories of her people. She will know them all._

_She will come to understand that in a corner of sky, just west of fading sun, the tiniest of glimmers can be found. It is little more than a speck of cosmic dust that grows brighter in the dying day. There she will find a light that once was called home. It is gone now, but its light…That light will keep shining, on and on and on, until the edge of the universe. Forever._

_Standing on Earth, she will look to the stars, and remember._

 

–––  
–––

 

The way we look to a distant constellation  
That's dying in a corner of the sky.  
These are the days of miracle and wonder,  
And don't cry baby, don't cry,  
Don't cry.  
 _\- Paul Simon_

 

–––  
–––

Note: The poem Kara recites are the lyrics to the old Irish song "The Minstrel Boy." It’s a sad and lovely song, and befitting of Billy Keikeya. You can listen to a version [ by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros from the Black Hawk Down soundtrack here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJi0H7D17IM).

Finally, any comment you choose to leave is both adored and appreciated. Thanks for reading :D  



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